Doubt about the brain and its relevance to classroom

39 practiced, as poor communication will certainly become disastrous in business, employment, labour and social relations.

The words however embrace both to public and private service industries, the blue and white-collar workers. The labour relation, employee relation or employment relations is interchangeably and can be applied everywhere. It is therefore resourceful for trade unions to ensure that policies and practices they adopt are not only fair in relation to the function and purpose for which they have been formed but they should take into consideration national interests along.Trainers role/leader, trust, training, teamwork, approach of human resource management (HRM), worker participation, working condition, change in management, gain sharing and balancing act (work and personal) are some of the factors that contribute to industrial harmony.

40 a stage or in other space designated for such performance.Ithas not ceased from performing varieties of purposes ranging from the practitioner's perspectives in historical and societal evolutions to the entertainment of the society.

Theatrical performances however require the collaborative efforts of various creative personalities, working towards a common goal which is the production. Performance is designed to entertain, instruct, motivate, win over, and above all, teach morals. In the performance, the audience plays pivotal role by providing the performers with immediate feedback, such as laughter, tears, applause, or silence as it was eminent with the ―Gbuji‖ TfD workshop. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, theatrical events have included such production elements as costumes, scenery, properties, music, and choreography. The theatre regardless of size or purpose requires artistic, managerial, and technical people as parts of a permanent staff to prepare and present productions on a predetermined schedule. It is instructive to state that the theatre apparently displays itself in various dimensions such Commercial theatre, Site specific theatre, industrial theatre, Children‘s Theatre in Education (CTiE) and Theatre for Development (TfD), etc.This research has adoptsthe framework of Theatre-for-Development (TfD). For the purposes of this study, our academic exercise on performance shall be limited to TfD because the term replicates its description as theatre in the service of community, thus, Asigbo submits in

―Deconstructing the Practice of Community Theatre in Nigeria‖that:

Community Theatre for Development, Popular Theatre or Theatre for Development and its other variants have remained a popular and preferred means of ostensibly reaching the under developed and marginalized of the earth by theatre workers and the so called development communicators....The practice of popular/community theatre has its exponents in the persons of Paolo Freire, Augusto Boal and others for the ―under developed‖ nations of Latin America while here in Nigeria, names like Oga Steve Abah, Jenks Okwori, John Egwugwulllah and some others hold sway. Institutionally, the Ahmadu Bello

41 University, Zaria holds the undebatable title of being the bulwark of community Theatre practice while schools like UNIABUJA, UNIJOS and UNIBADAN are following in ABU‘s, footsteps. However, to fully drive home our contentions on the futility of community Theatre as a development agent, an attempt will be made to deconstruct some of the seductive terms that are usually used to manipulate the emotions and conclusions of target communities. (np)

Mlama collaborates with Asigbo byasserting that the concept is known as Popular Theatre and expresses its purposes swiftly thus:

It aims to make the people not only aware of but also active participants in the development process by expressing their viewpoints and acting to better their conditions. Popular theatre is intended to empower the common man with a critical consciousness crucial to the struggle against the forces responsible for his poverty.

(67).

TfD ideally is a progression from less interactive theatre forms to a more dialogical process, where theatre is practiced with the people or by the people as a way of empowering communities, listening to their concerns, and then encouraging them to voice and solve their own problems.Theatre for Development (TfD) can be seen as a live performance or live performances, in other words, it is a theatre used as a developmental tool of which the ―Gbuji‖ Production workshop has epitomised. It however covers the following in-person activities, with people before an audience: a spoken-word during the performance, which is drama, dance, musical presentation, etc. Drama however is central in the activities of TfD. Drama always provides the people distinctive chance to bring immediacy to any situation, making what is knowledge of the past as actual discovery in the present. Drama in most cases helps the recreation of human activities, and can draw on material from the beginning of time, making immediate what is now possibly dry information and makes of it a living experience, significant to the heart and spirit as well as the mind.

42 Theatre for Development is a type of participatory theatre that encourages artistic power or creativity and audience members to take roles in the performance, or can be fully scripted and staged, with the audience observing. It is a performance about the people by the people, for the people, expressing their struggle to transform their social conditions and in the process changing those conditions. Quoting Ngugi in Byam, ―it is about ‗communities in motion‘ performing their dreams for a better future‖ (xv).

In every community where Theatre for Development subsists, it is always made possible by a squad of theatre practitioners who work with varieties of development and extension agencies, serving and helping them create theatre that will carry out messages. The theatre supposedly presents codes to be analysed by the participants and in that process direct them to new consciousness and a thoughtful reality. Theatre in Education basically targets educational institutions while Theatre for Development fundamentally concentrates on the community s i n c e i t i s a c om m u ni t y b a s ed t h e at r e . Although Byam is of the view that Theatre for Development, as it is known till date, ―is a relatively new phrase in the framework of theatre nomenclature, coined in Botswana in 1973, to describe an approach that attempted to reconcile Freirian concepts to a development project that used theatre as a stimulus. This particular form of theatre emerged from a quagmire of theatre terms with the distinct purpose of using theatre as a vehicle, a code of raising consciousness.‖ (25) Consequently, Theatre for Development is distinguished by active participation of members of the community in which it is anchoring, during which they discover and recognise their problems, contemplate and ponder on how and why the problems have effect on them and, with the understanding or knowledge acquired through an engagement with theatre performance, explore probable solutions. The objective of Theatre for

43 Development is however to arouse community awareness, consciousness and manifestation towards social transformation and possible change.

In a more rapid observation, Byam sustains further that:

Theatre for Development can in fact contribute to education for liberation as it has the potential to be used for conscientisation. She stresses that as (a) codification, it offers the participants a means of investigating and analysing their history, past and present, while also providing a forum for discussion. In addition, it further facilitates an understanding of the obstacles towards development by encouraging reflection on possibleproblems. (23)

In a related development, Frank asserts in her clarification between Theatre for Development and Popular Theatre that: ―Theatre for Development uses Popular Theatre traditions to convey messages. In her view, the concepts, Popular Theatre and Theatre for the People do not adequately describe the phenomenon.‖ (10) Correspondingly, she views Community Theatre and Participatory Theatre as inadequate tags; this is because they only handle an aspect of this type of theatre, which is characteristically participatory in nature. It is therefore imperative to share her sentiment on the use of the concept, Theatre for Development; this is because it is much more specific and entails the notion that its main apprehension is the endorsement and encouragement of development in a given community. In isolation, it symbolizes a new theatrical approach troubled with the empowerment of rural and underprivileged urban communities. In using this approach of theatre, the community should select the development issues around which the project will work in relation to the perception they have about theirreality.